


The Sand

by Antiopa



Category: Original Work
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Main character's gender is not specified, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:49:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27439864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antiopa/pseuds/Antiopa
Summary: It’s been raining all night, and the rocks are slippery. Despite the sun having been up for almost two hours, they still haven’t dried completely. It’s warm, and because of the rain that still remains in the humidity of the air, it feels almost like I’m in a rainforest, a greenhouse. I’m not wearing any shoes but despite this, it didn’t hurt walking on the gravel road all the way here from Olivia’s house. I think of how heavily she was sleeping when I left. Wonder if she’s woken up yet, if she’s read my note, how many times she’s called, if she’s on her way right now.





	The Sand

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Sanden](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27078838) by [Antiopa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antiopa/pseuds/Antiopa). 



> Due to a burst of random inspiration (and hatred for my mother language) I decided to translate this one too aha ha

It’s been raining all night, and the rocks are slippery. Despite the sun having been up for almost two hours, they still haven’t dried completely. It’s warm, and because of the rain that still remains in the humidity of the air, it feels almost like I’m in a rainforest, a greenhouse. I’m not wearing any shoes but despite this, it didn’t hurt walking on the gravel road all the way here from Olivia’s house. I think of how heavily she was sleeping when I left. Wonder if she’s woken up yet, if she’s read my note, how many times she’s called, if she’s on her way right now. 

Untying the boat from the pier is harder than expected. My fingers are experienced and steady, but the knot hasn’t been loosened in months. The rope has become wet, dried, become wet, and dried in the sun a hundred times over, and the left behind salt falls like snow during my attempts to undo the knot. At last, I manage it, and I wind up the rope and leave it on the pier. Then I climb down into the boat. 

I’ve always liked rowing. The sea is calm today, and it’s easy to make the boat cut through the water like a bullet. I’m strong, and I know this better than anyone else, like the back of my own hand. You need to utilize your entire body, all of me moves together with the oars, my muscles won’t be tired for a long time. I could row forever, until the boat rots underneath me, until the oars snap in half, until the sea evaporates in the sun. I could row forever. 

When I look up, I can barely see the pier anymore. It blends in smoothly with the sand and rocks surrounding it, but my bright red backpack is visible still. It contains my sleeping clothes and the shirt I borrowed from Olivia, my phone, headphones, the bracelet I got as a birthday gift from my mother, the keys to my house and bike, the letter. It contains me, in a way. The thought calms me. I won’t disappear, Something will remain, resting in the salty air and the bright sand. I continue rowing. 

It was my mother who taught me how to row, as soon as I was old enough to be able to hold the oars on my own. After that, it was dad who accompanied me out on the water when mom was too tired to stand up. Then, it was my aunt, when dad couldn’t stand up either, not through seventy meters of water. To be fair, by that time I was fully capable of going alone, and Elsa only joined because she liked the air out on the open sea. It made her forget everything that happened, she said to me. I continued rowing, without giving her a response. 

I pull the oars up into the boat when I’ve rowed so far out that not even my backpack is visible anymore, and the trees up by the road look more like tiny heads of broccoli. The boat continues drifting, but I just lay down on the damp deck, covered in a fine layer of sand that sticks to my hair and clothes. I close my eyes against the bright summer sun. 

I don’t know how long I lie there in the sun, only that when I open my eyes again, everything is blue for a couple of seconds until my eyes adjust, and I can look around for land. The boat has drifted a bit and turned around so I’m now facing the open sea, but I can still see where I came from. I sit up completely and look over the railing into the blue depths below me. 

I can feel myself tipping over, down into the water, but I don’t panic. My stomach ties itself into a knot, but I’m used to handling anxiety, so I stay completely still, without fighting my way back to the surface. Instead, I look down, down, into the deep. Somewhere down there, dad lies in the old sailboat, sleeping in the blue darkness. I want to lie down beside him, curl up by his side like I used to do as a kid, and my nightmares were more about monsters and less about capsized boats. 

When I had just turned eight years old, I tried to explain to Olivia how to lie on your back and just float in the water. I told her that it was easy because, to me, it was. 

“Just breathe really really slow and you’ll float!”

I know how to do it. Still, I don’t float. I sink down into the dark, like when you let the remaining angleworms go into the water, and you can see them twist around as they slowly descend into the deep. But I don’t twist. No, I am completely still. 

My eyes are still open, and I haven’t blinked in several minutes. I make a slow movement with my body, and manage to turn around to look up at where I came from. The sun plays over the surface high, high up there, and I can see the silhouette of the boat, like an almond. Suddenly, I don’t know why, I’m hit with a memory from summer two years ago, a few months after mom stopped fighting her sickness. Dad was sitting in the old sailboat, and I was swimming around it, fully equipped with a snorkel and flippers. With a deep breath, I dove down and swam underneath the boat, ran my hand along the hand-carved keel that grandpa made himself, spring 1957. It was smooth and slippery, the way that only oiled wood can be, and without a single mark or barnacle, seeing as dad had cleaned and fixed the boat up just a few days earlier. Now, I’m floating here in the water, and I can almost feel the smooth keel running along the palm of my hand. I close my eyes, and remember. 

When I open them again, I can no longer see the surface above me. I’m still sinking at a steady pace, but I can no longer see anything around me, except for the bioluminescent bacteria that, when I move my arms in the water, start twirling, forming galaxies. Olivia and I listened to an episode of that one horror podcast that she loves, something about a deep sea diver’s confessions. The diver mentioned having done the very same thing that I’m doing now; Lain in the deep sea and watched the bioluminescent bacteria twirl. To be fair, I don’t think he, who saw a complete stranger down there in the deep, was as calm as I am. I don’t think anyone’s been, ever. Not even Olivia, when we lay there eating peanut M&M’s and listening to her beloved podcast. Not even mom, when she finally got to rest without being in pain. Not even dad, when he laid down to sleep at the bottom of the sea, even if he probably came close. Because I don’t have a single problem in the world. Dad didn’t leave an explanation, no letter for me or grandpa, nothing. But while dad only left unanswered questions, I’m leaving everything important behind, so that no one has to grieve or wonder. I smile at the bacteria, a big genuine smile, with my teeth. They smile back. 

My back hits the sand with a soft thud, that makes my body slowly bounce back up again an inch, and then land, completely still at the bottom of the sea. I lie with my arms along my sides, and I can neither see nor hear anything in the oppressive darkness. Slowly, slowly, I turn my head to the left, and there it is. With the beautiful, handcrafted keel resting in the fine sand, and the sail turned against the wind. Grandpa’s boat. Slowly enough that I don’t even feel my body shifting, I turn on my side, so that I can admire the boat in its tragic beauty. With a soft shove, my body leaves the sand and floats freely in the dark, and a soft movement with my arms and legs brings me to where the boat lies.

The door down to the sleeping quarters is open like it usually is to let the air in when we sleep down there, dad and I. I look in, and everything looks normal. I enter carefully and close the door behind me, since it’s a bit chilly out tonight, after all. The familiar mattress, still with small grains of sand embedded between the threads in the sheet, feels like paradise for my tired body, and I lie down quietly, carefully as to not wake dad. I smile softly at his relaxed face, and close my eyes as my lungs breathe water.


End file.
